Las bases epistemológicas de la internacionalización de la educación superior en Brasil

Abstract

This paper, a portion of a doctoral dissertation, aims at understanding the epistemological bases of the dominant discourses on internationalization at a Brazilian public university. Based on the idea of (De)Coloniality, which emphasizes the hidden and darker side of Western modernity, I summarize the results of a qualitative empirical research conducted at the university, where I collected data through direct observation, interviews, bibliography, and documents. The results were organized in
five categories: (1)internationalization as an imperative and unconditional good; (2)internationalization as an object resultingfrom external determinations; (3) “Exclusively in English, of course”; (4)internationalization as means to stratification and generalized competition; and (5)internationalization as a means for the diffusion of modern/colonial rhetoric. These categories signal that in the university context, dominant internationalization discourses and strategies neglect
unequally international relations constituted throughout history and do not cover the comprehensiveness, diversity, or complexity of a Brazilian public university. Instead, they are highly functional to the current stage of ongoing global capitalism, reflecting a project that is designed to transform the university institution into an organization exclusively dictated by economic rationality. Additionally, results suggest that the dominant interpretation of internationalization at the university is
immersed in the cultural matrix of colonial power; it operates under the foundation of a hierarchical global imaginary that tends to reinforce unequal geographies of power, knowledge, and being. The study argues that enabling the conception of other ways of doing, living, and being in higher education international relations implies distancing from mainstream discourses that have been uncritically adopted and reproduced. The research contributes to deconstructing the discourse that
places this process as an “unconditional good”, shedding light on its complexity and attachment to political and ethical issues that are contestable and contradictory. More generally, it contributes to the development of an emerging field of critical internationalization studies.